Freight Quote Aggregator AI Agent

Every carrier. Every rate. One decision engine.

When a shipment needs to move, the traditional process involves emailing or calling multiple freight carriers, waiting for rate quotes to come back in different formats, and then manually normalizing everything into a comparison spreadsheet. By the time the best option is identified, hours have passed and rates may have already shifted. The Freight Quote Aggregator eliminates this entirely. Built natively in Domo using Workflows, Connectors, Agent Catalyst, and Code Engine, the agent connects to multiple carrier APIs simultaneously, pulls real-time quotes, normalizes every rate into a unified structure, and scores each option across cost, transit time, reliability history, and service level. The result is a ranked recommendation delivered in seconds rather than hours, with full transparency into why each carrier was scored the way it was.

Benefits

This agent transforms freight procurement from a manual, relationship-driven process into a data-driven optimization engine that operates at the speed of your logistics operation.

• Multi-carrier comparison in seconds: Simultaneously queries rate APIs across all connected carriers, eliminating the sequential email-and-wait cycle that delays every shipment decision
• Normalized rate structures: Converts varying carrier pricing formats — per-mile, per-hundredweight, flat rate, fuel surcharges, accessorial fees — into a unified comparison framework so every quote is apples-to-apples
• Composite scoring algorithm: Each quote is scored across four dimensions: total landed cost, estimated transit time, carrier reliability rating, and service level match, producing a single recommendation with full scoring transparency
• Real-time rate accuracy: Quotes are pulled live from carrier systems rather than cached or estimated, ensuring decisions are based on current market pricing
• Automated lane optimization: Identifies patterns across shipping lanes where certain carriers consistently outperform, building institutional knowledge into every future recommendation
• Complete audit trail: Every quote request, carrier response, scoring calculation, and final selection is logged for procurement review and carrier negotiation leverage

Problem Addressed

Freight procurement in most organizations operates on a combination of habit, relationships, and manual comparison. A logistics coordinator receives a shipment request, reaches out to two or three preferred carriers, waits for quotes that arrive in different formats and timelines, manually enters numbers into a spreadsheet, and makes a selection based on incomplete data under time pressure. The process works when volume is low and relationships are stable, but it breaks down as shipment frequency increases, new lanes open, or market rates fluctuate.

The deeper problem is invisible: without systematic comparison across all available carriers for every shipment, organizations overpay on freight consistently without knowing it. The coordinator picks the carrier who responds fastest or the one they have the best relationship with, not necessarily the one offering the best combination of cost and service for that specific lane and timeline. Over thousands of shipments per year, this adds up to significant unnecessary logistics spend with no mechanism to detect or correct it.

What the Agent Does

The agent operates as an automated freight procurement engine that handles the full quote-to-recommendation cycle:

• Shipment intake: Receives shipment parameters including origin, destination, weight, dimensions, commodity type, and required delivery window from the requesting system or user input
• Multi-carrier API queries: Simultaneously connects to all configured carrier rate APIs via Domo Connectors, submitting the shipment parameters and receiving real-time rate quotes
• Rate normalization: Code Engine processes each carrier response, extracting base rates, fuel surcharges, accessorial fees, and service commitments into a standardized schema for direct comparison
• Composite scoring: Agent Catalyst applies the weighted scoring algorithm across cost (40%), transit time (25%), reliability (20%), and service level (15%), producing a ranked recommendation list
• Recommendation delivery: Top-scored options are presented with full transparency — total cost breakdown, estimated transit, reliability score, and the reasoning behind the ranking
• Historical pattern analysis: Over time, the agent builds lane-level performance profiles for each carrier, enriching future scoring with actual delivery performance data rather than relying solely on quoted estimates

Standout Features

• Carrier-agnostic architecture: Add any freight carrier with an API — LTL, FTL, parcel, intermodal — without modifying the scoring logic. The normalization layer handles format differences automatically
• Configurable scoring weights: Organizations can adjust the cost-vs-speed-vs-reliability balance based on their priorities — a pharmaceutical shipper weights reliability higher than a commodity shipper optimizing for cost
• Lane intelligence: The agent tracks actual carrier performance by lane over time, automatically adjusting reliability scores based on on-time delivery rates rather than carrier-reported estimates
• Exception handling: When a carrier API is unavailable or returns an error, the agent proceeds with available quotes and flags the gap rather than blocking the entire recommendation
• Procurement negotiation data: The historical quote database becomes a powerful tool for annual carrier negotiations, showing exactly where each carrier won and lost business and at what price points

Who This Agent Is For

This agent is designed for any organization where freight costs represent a material spend category and the current quoting process relies on manual comparison or carrier favoritism.

• Logistics coordinators managing daily shipment routing decisions across multiple carrier relationships
• Procurement teams seeking data-driven freight cost optimization without adding headcount
• Supply chain directors who need visibility into carrier performance and spend allocation across lanes
• Operations managers shipping from multiple facilities who need consistent carrier selection logic across locations
• Finance teams looking to identify and reduce freight cost leakage across the organization

Ideal for: manufacturers, distributors, retailers, 3PLs, food and beverage companies, and any organization shipping frequently enough that a few percentage points of freight savings creates meaningful bottom-line impact.